MINISTER of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Senator Kamina Johnson Smith said yesterday that Jamaica will continue to monitor developments in Haiti to ensure that the electoral timetables previously announced are followed.

“The interim prime minister has indicated that the electoral timetables, which had previously been announced and which were supported by the Caribbean Community (Caricom) and the wider international community, will be followed. We will continue to monitor developments in this regard,” she assured the Senate in a statement.

“Members of the Caribbean Community, including Jamaica, have also been working through the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations to ensure that attention remains focused on the electoral crisis in Haiti, that Haiti remains a part of the deliberations, and that there is no outside imposition,” she added.

She said that Caricom nations acknowledge that much remains to be done in Haiti and are committed to remaining engaged thereon.

“In this regard, the leaders of the region continue their oversight of the community’s attention and response, with due regard to the sovereignty of Haiti and the principles on which the community is built. It is appreciated that the circumstances in our sister island, its systems and institutions, which have been the subject of international assistance, continue to require support,” she added.

Leader of Opposition Business in the Senate Peter Bunting suggested that Haiti was traumatised by “European and US imperialism”.

He also suggested that the relationship between the Jamaican Government and those of four other regional countries — Haiti, The Bahamas, Dominican Republic and St Lucia — who had a private club meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, with former US President Donald Trump had cost them the “moral authority” to impact the election timetable.

But Senator Johnson Smith said that she found the tone and the content of his question “objectionable, quite frankly” headline seeking.

She said that, while Jamaica was part of a meeting with the former president of the United States, along with other members of the Caribbean Community, its policy has always been to engage with the United States across administrations.

“They are our largest trading partner, and to disengage, at any point, has never been in our interest,” Johnson Smith, who is also the Leader of Government Business, told the Senate.

“The matter of engagements with Haiti is clearly a complex one, and the issues that Haiti has been addressing over the past several years really go far beyond, and could not be dealt with in a ministerial statement,” she argued.

However, she said that her statement was accordingly focused on addressing what is at the very core of what is being experienced by Haitians at home and abroad.

“The matter of institutional reconstruction is a little different from the fact that they need to renew the political infrastructure,” she said.

“It is not just simply the matter of holding a presidential election. They need to have local government elections. They need to have their Senate reconstituted. They have to do several things, and a constitutional reform process had been put on the way by President Jovenel Moise. It is this process of reform, during a process of great upheaval, which has garnered great focus on one hand, to provide the support which will allow for the establishment of strong political institutions that can maintain stability for Haiti and lead the country into a new phase operation.

“This was the vision. This was the understanding and the aim of the Moise presidency, and it has not manifested itself. But it was supported by the international community, who gave aid by providing technical expertise, et cetera, and Jamaica is engaged in the multilateral fora on these issues,” she explained.

She said that Caricom chose the representative for those engagements, who was the ambassador of St Vincent and the Grenadines. She said that the heads of government also agreed that they would establish an exploratory group to look at the situation and they did, and delivered a report.

Senator Johnson Smith said that it continues to be “very disconcerting” that on Wednesday morning, when Haitian president was killed, “we were actually all waiting for President Moise to join us at that meeting, for us to discuss not only the experts’ report, but related matters”.

She said that Jamaica has tried to engage bilaterally, “not only in the margins of Caricom, but through myself and the former foreign minister…not only on election matters, but arrangements pending in terms of security, border control, the subject of multi-country cooperative agreement, supported by the European Union (EU), and we worked with them”.

She said that there were other broader discussions and various other areas which were also important to the process.

“So Jamaica has always made itself available and has reached out. But where your institutions are not optimised, I will say, it makes it difficult to follow through on certain issues,” she stated.